


Historia

by ElfrootAndEezo



Category: Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë, Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Adaptation, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Jane Eyre Fusion, Childhood Trauma, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/F, Female Relationships, Independence, POV Krista Lenz | Historia Reiss, Romance, Slow Romance, Teaching, Thornfield Manor, classic lit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-15
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-03-31 15:57:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13978551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElfrootAndEezo/pseuds/ElfrootAndEezo
Summary: *A retelling of Jane Eyre, with Historia and Ymir in place of Jane and Mr Rochester.*Historia has dealt with a lot in her life, from cruel family to harsh living. She takes a position as governess at Thornfield Manor and finds herself secretly falling for her dark and intriguing employer Lady Ymir.





	1. Chapter I

**Author's Note:**

> This is an adaption of Charlotte Bronte's 'Jane Eyre' and features her writing heavily (particularly in the beginning.) 
> 
> The story will not follow Jane Eyre or Attack on Titan exactly, and I have taken the liberty to both add and ignore familial relationships for the sake of the narrative. 
> 
> No disrespect to any characters that may be shed in a negative light, I love all of the Attack on Titan characters. With the reasonable exception of a few like Rod, Kitz and some shitty Marley soldiers. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

 

There was entirely no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (her mother Alma, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question. 

I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons. Dreadful, it was to me, coming home in the twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings of Sasha, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Armin, Daz and Annie. 

 

The said Armin, Daz and Annie were now clustered around my mother in the drawing-room: she lay reclined on a sofa by the fireside and with her darling adopted children about her (for the time neither quarrelling nor crying) looked perfectly happy. Me, she had dispensed from joining the group; saying, 'She regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me at a distance; but that until she heard from Sasha, and could discover by her own observation that I was endeavouring in good earnest to acquire a more sociable and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly manner, -something lighter, franker, more natural as it was- she really must exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy, little children.'

 

"What does Sasha say I have done?" I asked. 

 

"Historia, I don't like quibblers or questioners: besides, there is something truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that manner. Be seated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent."

 

A small breakfast room adjoined the drawing room. I slipped in there, eager to free myself of my mother's disappointed stare. It contained a small bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care that it should be one stored with pictures. I settled onto the window seat, gathering up my feet and sitting cross-legged. 

 

Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the dreary November day. On occasion, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that Winter afternoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near, a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamented blast. 

 

I returned to my book - A History of Paradis: the letterpress thereof I cared little for, generally speaking; and yet there were specific introductory pages that I, child as I was, I could not pass entirely as a blank. They were those which treat the lands by the sea; of 'the solitary rocks and promontories' inhabited only by the birds.

 

Now, could I pass unnoticed the suggestion of the bleak shores of Marley, the Mid-East and Asia? And, those 'forlorn regions of dreary space, -the Northern reservoir of frost and snow, where firm fields of ice, the accumulation of centuries of winters, glazed in monstrous heights above heights, surround the pole and concentre the multiplied rigours of extreme cold.' Of these death-white realms, I formed an idea of my own: shadowy, like all the half-comprehended notions that float dim through children's brains, but strangely impressive. The words in these introductory pages connected themselves with the succeeding vignettes and gave significance to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray; to the broken boat stranded on a desolate coast; to the cold and ghastly moon glancing through bars of cloud at a wreck just sinking. 

 

I cannot tell what sentiment haunted the quite solitary churchyard, with its inscribed headstone; its gate, its two trees, its low horizon, girdled by a broken wall, and its newly-risen crescent, attesting the hour of eventide.

 

The two ships becalmed on a dead sea, I believed to be marine phantoms.  

 

The fiend pinning down the thief's pack behind him, I passed over quickly: it was an object of terror. 

 

So was the dark, horned thing seated aloof on a rock, surveying a distant crowd surrounding a gallows.

 

Each picture told a story; mysterious often to my undeveloped understanding and imperfect feelings, yet ever profoundly fascinating: as exciting as the tales Sasha sometimes narrated on winter evenings, when she in good humour, and when having brought her ironing-table to the nursery-hearth, she allowed us to sit around it, and while she got up their mothers lace frills, and crimped her night-cap borders, fed our eager attention with passages of love and adventure taken from old fairy tales and even older ballads. 

 

With A History of Paradis on my knee, I was then happy: happy at least in my way. I feared nothing but interruption, and that came too soon. The breakfast room door opened. 

 

"Boo! Madam Mope!" cried the voice of Daz; then he paused: he found the room apparently empty. 

 

"Where the dickens is she?" He continued. "Armin! Annie!" He called to the other children. "Historia is not here: tell Mother she has run out into the rain - bad animal!"

 

'It is well I drew the curtain,' thought I; and I wished fervently he might not discover my hiding place; nor would Daz have found it out himself; he was not quick either of vision or conception, but Armin just put his head in at the door and said at once:-

 

"She is in the window seat, to be sure, Daz."

 

And I came out immediately; for I trembled at the idea of being dragged forth by the said Daz. 

 

"What do you want?" I asked, with awkward diffidence. 

 

"Say, 'what do you want Master Daz;'" was the answer. "I want you to come here;" and seating himself in an armchair, he imitated that I was to approach and stand before him.

 

Daz was a schoolboy of fourteen years old, four years older than I, for I was but ten; large and stout for his age, with a dingy and unwholesome skin; thick lineaments in a spacious visage, heavy limbs and large extremities. He out now to have been at school; but Mother had taken him home for a month or two, 'on account of his delicate health.' Mr Ackerman, the master, affirmed that he would do well if Mother didn't spoil him so; but Mother's heart turned from an opinion so harsh, and inclined rather to the more refined idea that Daz's sallowness was owing to over-application and perhaps, to pining after home.

 

Daz had not much affection for Mother or the other children, and an antipathy to me. He bullied and punished me; not two or three times in the weeks, nor once or twice in the day, but continually: every nerve I had feared him, and every morsel of flesh on my bones shrank when he came near. There were moments when I was bewildered by the terror he inspired; because I had no appeal whatever against either his menaces or his inflictions; the servants did not like to offend their young master by taking my part against him, and Mother was blind and deaf on the subject: she never saw him strike or heard him abuse me; though he did both now and then in her very presence" more frequently, however, behind her back. 

 

Habitually obedient to Daz, I came up to his chair: he spent some three minutes in thrusting out his tongue at me as far as he could without damage; I knew he would strike soon and while dreading the blow, I mused on the disgusting and ugly appearance of him who would presently deal it. I wonder if he read that notion on my face; for, all at once, without speaking, he struck suddenly and sharply. I tottered, and on regaining my equilibrium retired back a step or two from his chair. 

 

"That is for your impudence in answering Mother a while since," said he, "and for your sneaking way of hiding behind curtains, and for the look you had in your eyes two minutes since, you bastard!" 

 

Accustomed to Daz's abuse, I never had an idea of replying to it; my care was how to endure the blow which I knew would follow the insult. 

 

"What were you doing behind the curtain?" he asked.

 

"I was reading."

 

"Show the book."

 

I returned to the window and fetched it immediately. 

 

"You have no business to take our books; you are a dependant, Mother says; you have no money, Father left you none; you ought to beg, and not to live here with legitimate children. You don't deserve to eat the same meals we do and wear clothes at our Mothers expense. Now, I'll teach you to rummage my bookshelves: for they are mine; all the house will belong to me in a few years. Go and stand by the door, out of the way of the mirror and the windows."

 

I did so, not at first aware what was his intention; but when I saw him lift and poise the book and stand in act to hurl it, I instinctively started aside with a cry of alarm. It was not soon enough, however; the volume was flung, it hit me, and I fell, striking my head against the door and cutting it. The cut bled, the pain was sharp: my terror had passed its climax; other feelings succeeded. 

 

"Wicked and cruel boy!" I said. "You are like a murderer - you are like a slave driver - you are like the Marley oppressors!"

 

"What! What!" He cried. "Did she say that to me? Did you hear her, Armin and Annie? Won't I tell Mother? But first" -

 

He ran headlong at me: I felt him grasp my hair and my shoulder: he had closed with a desperate thing. I really saw him a tyrant: a murderer. I felt a drop or two of blood from my head trickle down my neck and was sensible of somewhat pungent suffering: these sensations for the time eclipsed my fear, and I received him in frantic sort. I don't very well know what I did with my hands, but he called me 'Bastard! Bastard!' and bellowed out loud. Aid was near him, Armin and Annie had run for Mother, who was gone upstairs; she now came upon the scene, followed by Sasha and a young maid. We were parted: I heard the words:-

 

"Dear! Dear! What a fury to fly at Master Daz!"

 

"Did ever anybody see such a picture of passion!"

 

Then Mother subjoined:-

"Take her away to the red room, and lock her in there." There was a moment of hesitation before Mother shrieked again and four hands were upon me, and I was borne upstairs. 


	2. Chapter II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The red-room.

I resisted all the way: a new thing for me. Sasha pleads for Mother to let them forget about it, she, of course, doesn't. The fact is, I was a trifle beside myself; or rather out of myself: I was conscious that a moments mutiny had already rendered me liable to strange punishments, and like any other rebel slave, I felt resolved in my desperation, to go all lengths.

 

"Historia! You've gone mad, calm yourself, or the penalty will surely be worse."

 

"For shame! For shame!" cried the young maid. "What abysmal conduct, Miss Reiss, to strike your dear brother. Your young master!"

 

"Master!" I cried. "How is he, my master? Am I a servant?"

 

"No; you are less than a servant, for you do nothing for your keep. There, sit down, and think over your wickedness."

 

They had got me by this time into the apartment indicated by Mother and had thrust me upon a stool: my impulse was to rise from it like a spring; their two pairs of hands arrested me instantly. 

 

"If you don't sit still, your mother will have us tie you down." Sasha cries, holding her trembling hand out to the young maid. "Your garters, she would break mine directly."

 

The young maid turned to divest a stout leg of the necessary ligature. This preparation for bonds and the additional ignominy it inferred took a little of the excitement out of me. 

 

"Don't take them off," I cried; "I will not stir."

 

In guarantee of which, I attached myself to my seat by my hands.

 

"It's wise you don't," said Sasha; and when she had ascertained that I was really subsiding, she loosened her hold of me; then she and the young maid stood with folded arms, looking doubtfully on my face, as incredulous of my sanity. 

 

"She never did so before," at last said Sasha, turning to the young maid.

 

"But it was always in her," was the reply. "I've told Missis often my opinion about the child, and Missis agreed with me. She's an underhand little thing: I never saw a girl of her age with so much cover."

 

Sasha answered not; but ere long addressing me, she said, - "You ought to be aware, Miss, that we are all under obligations to Mrs Reiss: she keeps you: if she were to turn you off, you would have to go to the poor-house."

 

I had nothing to say to these words: they were not new to me: my very first recollections of existence included hints of the same kind. This reproach of my dependence had become a vague sing-song in my ear; very painful and crushing, but only half intelligible. 

 

The young maid, of course, joined in:- 

"And you ought not to think yourself on an equality with the Masters Reiss and Miss Reiss because Missis kindly allows you to be brought up with them. They will have a great deal of money, and you will have none: it is your place to be humble, and to try to make yourself agreeable to them."

 

"What we tell you is for your good," added Sasha, in no harsh voice. "You should try to be useful and pleasant, then, perhaps, you would have a home here; but if you become passionate and rude, Missis will send you away. I am sure of it."

 

"Besides," Said the young maid. "God will punish her: he might strike her dead in the midst of her tantrums, and then where would she go? Come, Sasha, we will leave her. I wouldn't have her heart for anything. Say your prayers, Miss Reiss, when you are by yourself; for if you don't repent, something bad might be permitted to come down the chimney and fetch you away." 

 

"Enough of that Miss Dreyse." Sasha chided, and they went, shutting the door, and locking it behind them. The red-room was a spare chamber, very seldom slept it; I might say never, indeed; unless when a chance influx of visitors rendered it necessary. Yet, it was one of the largest and stateliest chambers in the mansion. A bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany hung with curtains of deep red damask, stood out in the centre; the two large windows, with their blinds always drawn down, were half shrouded in festoons and falls of similar drapery; the carpet, like all else, was red; the table at the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth; the walls were a soft fawn colour, with a blush of pink in it, the wardrobe, the toilet-table, the chairs were of darkly polished old mahogany. Out of these deep surrounding shades rose high, and glared white, the piled up pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy counterpane. Scarcely less prominent was an ample cushioned comfortable chair near the head of the bed, also white, with a footstool before it; and looking, as I thought, like a pale throne.  

 

This room was chill because it seldom had a fire. It was silent, remote from the nursery and kitchens.  Solemn, because it was known to be rarely occupied. On Saturdays, the housemaid alone would come to wipe from the mirrors and the furniture a week's worth of dust. Mother herself, at far intervals, visited it to review the contents of a particular drawer in the wardrobe, and in that secret drawer lies the secret of the red-room and the spell which kept it lonely in spite of its grandeur. 

 

Father had been dead nine years: it was in this chamber he breathed his last breath, and since that day, a sense of dreary consecration had guarded it against frequent intrusion. 

 

My seat, in which Sasha and the bitter Miss Dreyse had left me, was a low ottoman near the marble chimney-piece; the bed rose before me and to the right was the tall, dark wardrobe. To my left, were the muffled windows, a great looking-glass between them repeated the vacant majesty of the bed and the room. I was not quite sure whether they had locked the door, and, when I dared move, I got up to see. No jail was ever more secure. Returning, I crossed before the looking glass, fascinated, I glanced involuntarily and explored the depth it revealed. All looked colder and darker in the mirror than in reality and the strange slight figure gazing at me, with a white face and glittering eyes of fear moving where all else was still, had the effect of a real spirit. I thought my own reflection like one of the tiny phantoms, half fairy, half imp, Sasha's evening stories told of coming out of lone ferny dells in moors, and appearing before the eyes of belated travellers. I returned to my stool. 

 

Though it was not yet her hour, superstition was with me at that moment. My blood was still warm, and the mood of the revolted slave was still bracing me with its bitter vigour; I had to stem a rapid rush of retrospective thought before I quailed to the dismal present. 

 

All Daz's violent tyrannies, and all their sister's indifference, all Mothers aversion, all the servants' partiality, turned up in my mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well. Why was I always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, forever condemned? Why could I never please? Armin, who was headstrong and unabashedly intelligent was respected. Annie, with her spiteful temper and captious carriage, was universally indulged. Her beauty, hair golden and pink cheeks, seemed to give delight to all who looked at her. Daz, no one faulted, much less punished however much he twisted the necks of pigeons, killed little chicks, set dogs at the sheep and broke the buds off the grandest plants in the conservatory. He bluntly disregarded Mothers wishes too and not unfrequently tore and spoiled her silk attire, and he was still her darling. I dared commit no fault: I strove to fulfil every duty, and I was termed troublesome and tiring, sullen and sneaking, each and every hour of the day. 

 

My head still ached and bled with the blow and fall I had received. And yet, no one had reproved Daz for wantonly striking me; and because I had turned against him to avert unnecessary violence, I was loathed and punished. 

 

'Unjust! - Unjust!' said my reason, instigating me to achieve escape from insupportable oppression - as running away, or, if that could not be effected, never eating or drinking more, and letting myself die. 

 

How anxious I was that dreary afternoon! How all my mind was in tumult and all my heart in insurrection! I could not answer the ceaseless inward question - why I thus suffered; now, at the distance of - I will not say how many years, I see it clearly. 

 

I was nothing. I had nothing in harmony with Mother and the other children, or her chosen servants. If they did not love me, in fact, as little did I love them. I know that had I been a brilliant, careless, exacting, handsome child - though equally dependent and friendless - Mother would have endured my presence more complacently. My siblings would perhaps have entertained me more, and the servants would have been less prone to use me as the nursery scapegoat. 

 

Daylight began to recede from the red room; it was past four o'clock, and the beclouded afternoon was turning to drear twilight. I heard the rain still beating on the staircase window, a continuous pit-pat accompanying the howling wind in the grove behind the hall. I grew by degrees, cold as stone and then my courage sank. My habitual mood of self-doubt and forlorn depression fell damp on the embers of my decaying ire. All said I was wicked, and perhaps I was. What thought had I just been nursing, that of starving myself to death? That indeed was a crime: and was I fit to die? Was the vault under the Church an inviting Bourne. I had been told that Father lied in such a vault, buried, and led by this thought to recall his idea, I dwelt on it with gathering dread. I could not remember him, but I knew that he was my own. I knew that Mother and some of the servants thought him to kind with me and that in his last moments he had required a promise from mother, to care for me. And so she had, in her opinion, as well as her nature allowed her. It must have been most irksome for her, bound to care for the child she couldn't love and to know that wickedness was of her own family. 

 

A singular notion dawned upon me. I doubted not - never questioned - that if Father had been alive he would have treated me kindly; and now as I sat looking at the white bed and shadowed walls I began to recall what I had heard of dead men, troubled in their graves by the violation of their last wishes, revisiting the earth to punish and avenge; and I thought Father's spirit, harassed by the wrongs of his youngest child, might quit its abode - either in the church vault or the world of the departed - and rise before me in this chamber. 

 

I wiped my tears and quietened my sobs; fearful that any sign of violent grief might waken a preternatural voice to comfort me with strange pity, or elicit from the dark some haunted face. Shaking my hair from my eyes, I lifted my head and tried to glance around the dark room: at this moment a light gleamed on the wall. Was it, I asked myself, light from the moon penetrating the blind? No; moonlight was still, and this stirred. While I gazed, it glided up to the ceiling and quivered over my head. I can now conjecture readily, that this shining light was in all likelihood a reflection of some light from a lantern, carried by someone across the garden: but then, prepared as my mind was for horror, shaken as my nerves were by agitation, I imagined the swift darting light was a herald of some other world. 

 

My heart beat thick, and my head grew hot, a sound filled my ears, which I in my fearful state deemed to by the wooshing of wings: something seemed near me; I was oppressed, suffocated: strength broke down; I rushed to the door and shook the lock in desperate effort. Steps came running along the passage outside the door, and the key turned, Sasha and Miss Dreyse entering. 

 

"Miss Reiss, are you ill?" Said Sasha.

 

"What a horrendous noise! It ran right through me!" Exclaimed Miss Dreyse.

 

"Take me out! Let me go to the nursery!" Was my cry. 

 

"What for child? Are you hurt? Have you seen something?" Again demanded Sasha.

 

"Oh! I saw a light, and I thought a ghost would come." I had now got hold of Sasha's hand, pleading. 

 

"She has screamed out on purpose," Declared Dreyse, in clear disgust. "And what a scream! If she had been in great pain, one might excuse it, but she only used her naughty trick to bring us all here." 

 

"What is all this?" Another voice demanded, and Mother came along the corridor her gown rustling. "Dreyse and Sasha, I believe I gave orders that Historia Reiss should be left alone here, till I came to her myself."

 

"Miss Reiss screamed so loud, Ma'am." Pleaded Sasha. 

 

"Let her go," was the only answer. "Loose Sasha's hand, you cannot succeed in getting out by these means. I hate trickery, particularly in children. It is my duty to show you that this nonsense will not work, you will now stay here an hour longer."

 

"Mother, please have pity! Forgive me - I cannot endure it, let me be punished another way. Please, Mother, I shall be killed if-"

 

"Silence!" Mother cried. "This violence is repulsive." In her eyes, I was a precarious actress: she sincerely looked at me as a compound of volatile passions, mean spirit and duplicity. 

 

Sasha and Miss Dreyse having retreated, Mother, impatient of my now frantic and wild sobs, abruptly thrust me back and locked me in. I heard her sweeping away, and soon after she was gone. 

 


End file.
